Your Top Three: Date Movies

Your Top Three is a series here at Movies.com where we choose a topic and you give us your top three picks.

Valentine's Day is this Friday, and that hopefully means date night for you and yours. Maybe that involves going out to dinner and a movie, or maybe you'll be taking it easier and staying in with a certain DVD or three. With less than a week to go before the holiday, we'd like to spark up a discussion and some inspiration for you to pick the proper titles. You don't want your date movies to include anything boring or difficult or depressing or angering (basically, most documentaries and slow political foreign films are out).

Whether your Valentine is a longtime partner or someone new, chances are you can already think of a few movies you find appropriate for the occasion that aren't necessarily romance pictures yet are still specifically movies to watch on a date. Maybe it's an old favorite you want to introduce him or her to, perhaps it's simply a title you know both of you will enjoy and might fuel the romance in spite of not being about a mushy love story.

To provide an example, here are three movies I consider perfect date movies, albeit not quite together as a triple feature:

1. North by Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock's classic action thriller is consistently exciting, funny and sexy. By the end of the ride, you two will feel sufficiently entertained and then you'll probably start planning a cross-country trip together, maybe by train.

2. Sherman's March - Ross McElwee's personal film takes us on an amusing journey around the South and around the filmmaker's own love life as he bounces back from a bad breakup. McElwee regular Charleen Swansea is one of the most enjoyable documentary characters of all time, and you might jointly wish she was in your life giving you advice about your own relationship.

3. Raising Arizona - Comedy is very important on a date, as a sense of humor can keep the mood light and also be rather attractive. But what if you put on something your partner doesn't find funny? Not a chance with this Coen brothers classic, which works to all intelligence levels. And if you're parents trying to have one night without the kids and worry that a movie about children is the wrong way to go, I agree yet also recommend this as a movie that will make you appreciate your own.

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